


My Brother's Keeper

by dragonofdispair



Series: Unrelated Prompt Responses [44]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One, White Collar
Genre: Commuted Sentence, Crimes And Criminals, Fusion, Gen, Humor, anniversarychallenge16, why why WHY is this my life?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 12:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8162764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofdispair/pseuds/dragonofdispair
Summary: Jazz may not be Prowl’s brother, but someone nominated him as Prowl’s keeper. This is not a job he is going to enjoy. At all.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [anniversarychallenge16](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/anniversarychallenge16) collection. 



> So this is my _second_ attempt to fulfill the prompt “Am I My Brother’s Keeper?” for the ProwlxJazz Livejournal community anniversary challenge. Fusion with _White Collar_ , but you don’t have to have seen that show to understand this short fic.
> 
> Beta’ed by Rizobact

“This is a tracking anklet. You have a two — I repeat _two_ — megamile radius from this building. Leave that radius and a hundred cops will dogpile on you within nine kliks. And _you_ will have a one-way ticket back to the slammer.” Jazz smirked as he attached the mech's new bit of not-jewelry to his ankle. “You know what will happen if you try and tamper with it.”

“A hundred thousand Enforcers’ll show up within nine klicks and I go back to jail,” the prisoner answered, lifting his leg to examine his new accessory. “I understand.”

“Primus,” Jazz swore. “I can’t believe I’m doing this. Why — _why_ am I doing this?”

This was a notorious criminal after all. A forger, thief and con artist of the highest caliber. He might have only been convicted of bond forgery — as if that weren’t _enough_ — but had also been implicated in dozens of other thefts. He wouldn’t have been caught at forging the bonds either, if he had reigned in his ego and _not signed_ them. The mech had a real optic for detail, but those little signatures had been his downfall.

A mistake Jazz knew the mech would never make again, if he escaped or was allowed to go free. Four vorns of prison certainly hadn’t _reformed_ him. Serving the next four vorns of his sentence helping solve similar cases wasn’t going to do anything but give the mech a chance to keep his hands in the game while he did so. This was a _bad_ idea all around, but it wasn’t up to Jazz.

Prowl looked up at him and quirked an optic-ridge. “Because you’re never going to catch the head of that illegal gambling ring — or shut down his counterfeit currency operation — without my expertise.”

“Right.” Jazz swore again. “Primus damn it.”

Prowl didn’t grin, but there was a distinctly smug tilt to the Praxan’s doorwings. “Come on, Jazz. This’ll be fun.”

“Fun…” Jazz said, shaking his head. “That is not the word I would have used. _Primus.”_ He swore yet again. “Why, why, _why_ is this my life!”

“Keep making that face and your hydraulics will freeze like that.”

“I hate you, you know that?”

“Aww.” Prowl drawled. “After the amount of time and effort you put into catching me — “

 _“Twice.”_ Jazz interrupted. The second time had been for _escaping_ from prison, and it did not make Jazz feel better that Prowl had made walking out of the front door of a super maximum security prison look effortless.

Prowl made a dip of his doorwings, seemingly unaffected by the jab. “Twice,” he acknowledged, “one would think you would have come to appreciate how much… art there is to a good forgery.”

“Oh great,” Jazz muttered exasperatedly. “You admire this guy.”

“Hardly,” Prowl sauntered around Jazz’s desk at Iacon Enforcer headquarters, idly picking up and opening a file. “There’s no effort, no _challenge_ in forging currency. Can’t make what you need, which ironically makes it the easiest kind of forgery to do and the hardest to get away with. You have to steal everything from the treasury department. Arrange a smash and grab — wham, bam, done… no art.”

“Are you saying you _wouldn’t_ be doing this if you could?”

“Of course I would.” Prowl threw a smirk at his keeper. “Especially if I had the perfect way to launder it like an illegal gambling ring full of high rollers.”

Jazz narrowed his visor suspiciously. “Who said anything about high rollers?”

Prowl just looked back blandly. “The expense of counterfeiting shanix isn’t worth it if you’re making bills worth less than fifty shanix. Hundreds are better. Five hundreds are too rare… no, if he’s making them himself, he’s making hundreds. And if he’s laundering them in his _illicit gambling den,”_ the Praxan purred admiringly, “that means handing out his forged bills. Handing out hundreds. You don’t do that unless the players are betting and winning hundreds. Simple logic.”

“So we start tracking his customers.” Jazz was already opening up the internal office intercom to start ordering files, but Prowl interrupted.

“Or…”

Jazz gave the forger a flat look. “Or. What.”

“I…” Prowl said enticingly, “I _might_ have an alias who could join in those games. Get you an invite, an inside view. Actually get you some proper evidence instead of a lot of hearsay.”

“An alias,” Jazz repeated. “I thought I burned all your aliases when I was tracking you.”

“Not all.”

“So spit it out, who is this high-rolling _alias?”_

“Before you I give you his name, I’m going to have to have a couple of _assurances.”_

Jazz nodded. He understood. “In other words, giving us your alias’ name will implicate you in crimes that aren’t on your record yet. You want immunity.”

“It really is only a small thing to ask,” theatrically, Prowl placed a regretful hand over his spark, “compared to allowing this horrible villain to continue to ruin our fair planet’s economy with his disgusting forgeries. You know me —”

“Yeah. I know you.” Jazz clenched his hands several times, flexing his claws. He knew Prowl, as well as the mech knew himself. Which was why the mech hadn’t even been putting any effort into his lies. But Prowl knew Jazz too. You couldn’t chase a mech for as long as Jazz had chased Prowl without your target knowing you as well as you knew him. Which was why Prowl knew that those words were getting under Jazz’s plating. Prowl didn’t mean a single glyph, but they affected Jazz. “You know what? Fine. Immunity. Who is this high-rolling gambler-alias?”

Finally Prowl smiled. “I do believe this is the start of a beautiful relationship.”

“I still hate you.”

“I have another question you might want to answer — for your _investigation_ of course.” That smug tilt of his doorwings was back.

“What?”

“Given the lack of a planet-wide mechhunt, I’m assuming the Cybertronian Planetary Treasury hasn’t reported a printing plate stolen recently… so where’d he get it?”

_“Primusdamnit!”_


End file.
